Until now, ordinary telephones and mobile phones have mainly been targeted for delivery of advertisements by telephone services.
However, in recent years, IP (Internet Protocol) telephones have been rapidly spreading. In the future, advertisement delivery systems by telephone services utilizing communication technology unique to these IP telephones are expected to be realized. The embodiments hereinafter attempt to realize such an advertisement delivery system by IP telephone services.
As methods for delivering advertisements by telephone services, the three advertisement delivery methods (1), (2), and (3) have been proposed.
Advertisement delivery method (1): Advertisement delivery method where a user listens to a voice advertisement before speaking, then the user can speak free of charge or extremely cheaply.
Advertisement delivery method (2): Advertisement delivery method where a mobile phone or the like downloads and stores an advertisement image in advance and displays the stored advertisement image while standing by, during speaking, or during calling, then the user can speak free of charge or extremely cheaply.
Advertisement delivery method (3): Advertisement delivery method where a user calls a specific telephone number linked to an advertisement, then the user can speak free of charge.
Note that, as known art relating to the embodiments, there is the “advertisement information processing method in a portable phone system” disclosed in the following Patent Document 1. This is substantially the same as the advertisement delivery method (2).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-186575
The above advertisement delivery method (1) has the inconvenience that the user cannot start to speak until after listening to the voice advertisement played before speaking. Therefore, he or she cannot start conversing immediately after making a call.
The above advertisement delivery method (2) requires that the mobile phone or the like downloads and stores an advertisement in advance. Therefore, the size of the advertisement image ends up being limited to a size able to be stored in a mobile phone or the like. The same advertisement image will be repeatedly displayed many times over the course of a long telephone conversation. Further, such an advance storage method is not suited for delivery of advertisements—which demands real time flexibility. Further, it is necessary for advertisement images to be downloaded constantly even when the subscriber is not making a telephone call, so traffic is generated regularly. Therefore, the communication fee for downloading these advertisement images has to be borne by the subscriber or the carrier.
The above advertisement delivery method (3) has the inconvenience in that it is applied to a situation in which a call is destined only for a specific telephone number linked to an advertisement, so cannot be applied to calls to unspecified parties who are not advertisers.